Reflections on Reves v. Ernst & Young: Its Meaning and Impact on Substantive, Accessory, Aiding Abetting and Conspiracy Liability under RICO

In March 1993, accountants, attorneys and other professionals—who generally view RICO with suspicion—breathed a sigh of relief when they read the Washington Post: People who lose money in thrifts and other businesses that go belly up because of wrongdoing can no longer use [RICO] to sue lawyers, accountants, or other advisers who played key roles in the enterprise. Unfortunately, this terse description of the Supreme Court\u27s decision issued the previous day in Reves v. Ernst & Young may persuade professionals that they dropped an anchor in a tranquil safe-harbor, far from an exposure to the perils of the private enforcement provisions of RICO that authorize the recovery of treble damages and counsel fees for engaging in certain kinds of commercial frauds. The last chapter on the ultimate impact of the Supreme Court\u27s decision, however, is not yet written. In fact, a careful analysis of the Court\u27s opinion in the context of well-settled areas of criminal jurisprudence indicates that Reves\u27 impact should be far more nuanced; it should not result in creating a safe-harbor for errant professionals

Practice and Procedure under Amended Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

The purpose of this article is to explore the substantive provisions of amended Rule 11 and its historic antecedents, the procedure by which sanctions may be sought and/or imposed, the sanctions which the court may impose and the persons upon whom the sanctions can be imposed

Some Practical Implications of Civil RICO Cases

Enacted as Title IX of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (commonly known by the appellation RICO or The RICO Act ) was the end product of a lengthy legislative effort to develop new legal remedies to deal with the problem of organized crime. In recent years, however, the statute has become the focus of controversy as plaintiffs, compelled by the possibility of winning treble damages and attorney\u27s fees, have sought to apply the civil remedies provision of the Act to all types of cases, including those involving what might be termed garden variety business fraud. The civil damages provision of the RICO Act has been the subject of much legal commentary. Unfortunately, previous articles have generally provided the practitioner with little guidance regarding some of the practical aspects of civil RICO litigation, i.e., how to determine when your client has a civil RICO claim, where and when to file the action and, most importantly, how (and hopefully how not) to try a civil RICO case. The purpose of this article is to set forth some approaches to these practical problems

Practice and Procedure under Amended Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

The purpose of this article is to explore the substantive provisions of amended Rule 11 and its historic antecedents, the procedure by which sanctions may be sought and/or imposed, the sanctions which the court may impose and the persons upon whom the sanctions can be imposed

Community-Centered Responses to Ebola in Urban Liberia: The View from Below

The West African Ebola epidemic has demonstrated that the existing range of medical and epidemiological responses to emerging disease outbreaks is insufficient, especially in post-conflict contexts with exceedingly poor healthcare infrastructures. This study provides baseline information on community-based epidemic control priorities and identifies innovative local strategies for containing EVD in Liberia.In this study the authors analyzed data from the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Monrovia and Montserrado County, Liberia. The data were collected for the purposes of program design and evaluation by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Government of Liberia (GOL), in order to identify: (1) local knowledge about EVD, (2) local responses to the outbreak, and (3) community based innovations to contain the virus. At the time of data collection, the international Ebola response had little insight into how much local Liberian communities knew about Ebola, and how communities managed the epidemic when they could not get access to care due to widespread hospital and clinic closures. Methods included 15 focus group discussions with community leaders from areas with active Ebola cases. Participants were asked about best practices and what they were currently doing to manage EVD in their respective communities, with the goal of developing conceptual models of local responses informed by local narratives. Findings reveal that communities responded to the outbreak in numerous ways that both supported and discouraged formal efforts to contain the spread of the disease. This research will inform global health policy for both this, and future, epidemic and pandemic responses

Search for gravitational waves associated with the InterPlanetary Network short gamma ray bursts

We outline the scientific motivation behind a search for gravitational waves associated with short gamma ray bursts detected by the InterPlanetary Network (IPN) during LIGO's fifth science run and Virgo's first science run. The IPN localisation of short gamma ray bursts is limited to extended error boxes of different shapes and sizes and a search on these error boxes poses a series of challenges for data analysis. We will discuss these challenges and outline the methods to optimise the search over these error boxes.Comment: Methods paper; Proceedings for Eduardo Amaldi 9 Conference on Gravitational Waves, July 2011, Cardiff, U

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Some Practical Implications of Civil RICO Cases

Enacted as Title IX of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (commonly known by the appellation RICO or The RICO Act ) was the end product of a lengthy legislative effort to develop new legal remedies to deal with the problem of organized crime. In recent years, however, the statute has become the focus of controversy as plaintiffs, compelled by the possibility of winning treble damages and attorney\u27s fees, have sought to apply the civil remedies provision of the Act to all types of cases, including those involving what might be termed garden variety business fraud. The civil damages provision of the RICO Act has been the subject of much legal commentary. Unfortunately, previous articles have generally provided the practitioner with little guidance regarding some of the practical aspects of civil RICO litigation, i.e., how to determine when your client has a civil RICO claim, where and when to file the action and, most importantly, how (and hopefully how not) to try a civil RICO case. The purpose of this article is to set forth some approaches to these practical problems